From AmericanPress.com
By DORIS MARICLE
AMERICAN PRESS
JENNINGS — The mystery surrounding the deaths of seven women in Jeff Davis Parish in the last four years has caught the eye of a documentary film crew from Switzerland.
“I’m pretty much addicted to trawling through the Web sites of the media outlets of small towns across America and Europe, trying to find stories that haven’t hit the mainstream or national media yet and may be suitable for a documentary,” Paul Nixon of Kodiak Productions wrote in an e-mail to the American Press.
After reading a short post about the deaths on a crime forum, a little Googling led Nixon to Jeff Davis Parish.
“I felt there was a great sense of injustice in what I was reading about the cases,” he wrote. “I have no links to Jennings and nothing tying me to anyone involved, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There are families searching for answers, a community not knowing what’s happening and a police force struggling to solve the crimes.”
Nixon was also concerned about the lack of statewide and national attention given to the deaths.
“I live in a town roughly twice the size of Jennings and I know for sure that if seven bodies had been dumped in and around town over a relatively short time period, that we would have been inundated with media.”
Jeff Davis Sheriff Ricky Edwards said Friday that he welcomes Nixon and his crew. “I will be happy to work with and answer their questions,” he said.
Edwards said he and Nixon have e-mailed each other several times concerning the project.
“I think this is a story that needs to be told,” Nixon further wrote. “For people outside of Jennings and outside of Louisiana to hear what’s going on, what better way than to meet the people of the parish and to put their story into words and pictures?”
Nixon said he is unsure what direction the documentary will take.
“I’ve read a lot about these cases and spoken to people in Jennings, but until you get to the town and get a firsthand sense of what’s happening, then it’s almost impossible to know exactly what the film will be about,” he wrote. “Once we meet the characters and spend a little time in the parish, then I believe that all will become much more clear.”
Nixon said he hopes the film will help bring some closure to the mystery.
“We’re certainly not coming in as vigilantes, trying to be heroes and solve the cases. Absolutely not. But we are hopeful that we may speak to someone or discover some information that helps everybody move a step closer to finding a solution.”
The crew is scheduled to be in the parish Sept. 4-12 and film as much as possible and make as many contacts as possible, Nixon said. They could return near the end of the year for additional filming to finish the project, he said.
Nixon said the long-term plans for the project depend on what suits the story best.
“Once we’ve been to Jennings and we know what we’re dealing with, then we can decide if it’s a documentary aimed at a TV audience or something more suited to a theatrical release. The main goal is to get it to the widest audience possible, to raise the profile of the town’s plight to the wider world.”
Nixon has worked in sports media for many years, and Matthew Clyde, co-director at Kodiak Productions, works in the commercials and music video industry.
The project will be their second documentary. Their first, “Me, Joe and B.T.K.,” was completed last year and is doing well on the festival circuit. The film focuses on the hunt for Dennis Rader, who was known as the “bind, torture, kill strangler,” after he reportedly killed 10 people near Wichita, Kan., between 1974 and 1991.
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